The Ascendant Stars - Michael Cobley [76]
To his narcotised eyes, the occupants of the lines of recesses were smiling at him as he passed by, nodding and winking. Welcome to Di-Yu, they were saying, welcome to the Hell of the Iron Web. One said, The god Ping-Deng-Wang is the judge here. Another said, Have you committed any of the Ten Unpardonable Sins? If you have, you’ll be stuck here for eternity …
I haven’t, honestly, I give you my word! he desperately wanted to say as he opened his eyes, not realising that he had closed them …
He was shocked to find that he was now in a recess, gazing across at another unfortunate who hung limply amid his own web of restraints. I must have passed out, he reasoned but when he peered at the drug vials they looked almost full. A nameless, inescapable fear twisted in the pit of his stomach, which ached with hunger. Then, amid his anguish, he noticed that the captive opposite, a lanky humanoid with a blockish head, had opened one dark and gleaming eye and was staring straight at him.
But the drugs were muffling his senses again, numbing the complaints from his stomach, surging steadily up into a great warm heavy wave that just rolled over him, tumbling him into a glittering darkness …
Voices woke him the next time, along with the trundle of wheels and the rattle of implements. He listened with eyes closed.
‘ … why is this one kept from the caul? It’s ripe for it … ’
‘Orders from the Greatlords – Humans are now to be held for our Vor brothers, for their uses … ’
‘Pauch! – mindeater scum – not my brothers! No honour, bad fate … ’
‘Bad fate if Old Irontooth hears your whining … ’
Vials clinked and moments later a torpid tide poured through his veins, tingling then numbing and smothering …
CHEL
In wounded dreams he wandered. It seemed that he could see through the daughter-forest’s dense foliage to the rough lands beyond, and through them to the furthest corners of the Human colony. In his vudron dream, all seven of the daughter-forests were visible and curiously close – a short walk could take him to Ibsenskog in the south or Tapiola in the north. The entire landscape of the colony was visible in vibrant colours rich with detail: the towns and cities as much as the tracks and woods of the coastal farmlands.
Yet the daughter-forests had a special quality to them, a faint aura of power and mystery, even poor, half-burned and abandoned Buchanskog east of Hammergard. The cold waves of the Korzybski Sea stretched eastwards, while to the west lay Giant’s Shoulder, then a maze of ridges and ravines and the foothills of the Kentigerns, their jagged peaks marching west and north. And scattered among the vales and gorges, south along the Savrenki range and north across the vast Forest of Arawn, were the glows of burrows, ancient Uvovo chambers built during the time of Segrana-that-was.
He had visited one many days ago, soon after the Seer husking, and recollection of its dusty interior came back with surprising clarity and force. The vudron dream was lucid yet easily swayed – between one moment and the next he went from the hazy, sunny paths of a daughter-forest to the dry, gritty gloom of that underground burrow. Scholar Trem, the Uvovo in charge then, approached from one side, his plain brown robe streaked with dust.
‘Keeper,’ he said. ‘This is the seedpod of battle. You must bring the Eyes.’
‘I am not the Keeper,’ Chel said. ‘The Human Catriona is the Keeper of Segrana.’
‘The Keeper of Umara,’ Trem said, ‘must bring the Eyes to the seedpods of battle.’
Suddenly they were standing in the chamber of living roots beneath the roothouse. Scholar Trem raised a cupped hand over a thick root embedded in the wall, tipped it and let a stream of glowing blue motes fall onto the root. They sank into the moist green and black woody skin and soon a flickering blue tracery spread along to branching rootlets and to the other rootsworks until the chamber was full of pure blue light.
With a sudden intake of breath he awoke in the darkness of the vudron. It